“I was so confused. I asked myself: how did they get my phone number?”
She added: “He talked too fast. I said, ‘Can you please slow down?’”
The pensioner needed a lounge suite, she told the Herald, and she hoped to get it before Christmas.
“I asked him how much.”
She said $50 a week was suggested but that was too much so they agreed on $30 a week.
“We did it on the phone – the contract, the payments. I said, ‘Can you email me?’ He said, ‘I will’, but that didn’t happen.”
She added: “I didn’t contact him because everything was settled on the phone. He said after 23 payments he will deliver the lounge suite.”
So she kept on with the automatic payments, but after 20 payments decided to call him.
“I contacted him and then when I rang him with both numbers he gave me, and what I get is the phone is not in use anymore.”
The 70-year-old figured she must have the wrong number.
She said she tried for the next two days to contact HouseSmile but received no answer.
With $600 already spent and no sign of the lounge suite, she thought: “Oh my God, how can I contact him?”
The CAB suggested she might have been scammed.
“I thought: ‘What? Oh my God, I want my money back, this is a big loss for me.”
She felt betrayed.
“He talked nicely that day. I was very honest on my side.”
She said she lost $720 before deleting the automatic payment.
“I was so frustrated and so angry,” she added.
“I won’t be doing this anymore. My daughter was telling me off. She said, ‘Mum, I told you to talk to me before you do this kind of thing’.”
Liquidator Pritesh Patel this week told the Herald he was fielding calls from victims complaining about “thieving bastards” who used cold calling.
Patel said the business took money from customers through an intermediary company called Flo 2 Cash.
Patel said it used these funds to fulfil previous customer orders in what he called a “Ponzi operation model”.
Tech Vault Enterprises, trading as HouseSmile, was incorporated in April 2020.
Rahil Munir Tharani of Hamilton is listed as the sole shareholder and director.
This week he told the Herald he had severe health issues.
“I’m not good at the moment,” he added. “I don’t know about Flo 2 Cash. They’re a different entity.”
The Commerce Commission said Tech Vault Enterprises, trading as HouseSmile, was fined $60,000 for unconscionable conduct.
It said the conduct involved repeated unsolicited sales calls to an elderly woman suffering from dementia.
The company was also ordered to make a $7500 payment for emotional harm.
It said HouseSmile mostly sold household goods, such as electronics, exclusively on layby, meaning people made payments to secure an article for later purchase.
The commission said HouseSmile invited contact through Facebook advertisements or through its website.
“Its sales agents would then phone consumers, and would also make unsolicited calls to customers on its database.”
Patel on Tuesday said Tharani was co-operating with liquidation proceedings.
His first liquidator’s report, with a list of known creditors, can be viewed at this Companies Office page.
John Weekes is a business journalist covering aviation and court. He has previously covered consumer affairs, crime, politics and courts.
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